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Indian police say Hyderabad bombs gift-wrapped

(AFP) HYDERABAD, India: The two bombs which killed 42 people in the southern Indian city of Hyderabad were wrapped in gift paper and placed inside rucksacks to avoid detection, a report said on Tuesday, quoting police.

Police got the lead when they uncovered and defused a third bomb at a cinema hall on Saturday, after two others had exploded in a packed outdoor auditorium and a busy food stall, the Hindustan Times newspaper said.

“The bombs were hidden in a wooden crate, inside a gift box that looked like a present given on any auspicious occasion, say a birthday,” police official Poorna Rao told the daily.

“But it actually spelt death-day.”

Rao said he believed the culprits had used gold-coloured foil and knapsacks to avoid suspicion from the police and the public when they planted the explosives.

More than 50 people were injured in the twin bombings in the mixed Hindu-Muslim city, which is the capital of Andhra Pradesh state.

The state’s chief minister said at the weekend that “available information” pointed to the involvement of terror groups based in neighbouring Pakistan and Bangladesh.

Indian officials generally blame such attacks on Islamic extremists seeking to stoke Hindu-Muslim tensions and derail New Delhi’s peace process with Pakistan, but later present little evidence to back their claims.

The Indian media has quoted unnamed police officials as saying the main suspects were members of the Bangladesh-based militant outfit Harkatul Jihad Al-Islami (HuJI). Dhaka has rejected India’s allegations.

Indian officials were due to continue the interrogation of a key HuJI member who was already in jail for alleged involvement in previous bombings, the Indian Express reported Tuesday.

Jalaluddin Mullah, who was arrested this year, has confessed that he delivered explosives across the country several times since 2004, but security agencies had so far done little about his claims, the newspaper reported.

Mullah is said to have worked with HuJI member Shahid Bilal, who has been named by police as the prime suspect in the Hyderabad blasts, according to the Indian media.

Hyderabad police have made no arrests so far.

Police are also still investigating the bombing of a mosque in Hyderabad in May, in which 11 people were killed.